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Some Popular Uses of Sea-Beans

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Some Popular Uses of Sea-Beans WINNER OF THE MAGNUS MAGNUSSON ESSAY PRIZE (2013) A Northern Charm: some popular uses of Sea-Beans Guinevere Barlow* FOR centuries sea-beans washed up on the shores of Western Europe have mystified and excited their finders. Whilst today they are most likely to be collected, polished and consigned to the shelf as souvenirs, at one time their various varieties served practical purposes, including supposedly curative and protective functions. These popular uses extended across Ireland, Scotland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and Norway: all along the route of the Gulf Stream. One particular employment was as a childbirth charm. A Hebridean example, presented to the pioneering folklorist Alexander Carmichael (1832– 1912) in 1869, is on display in the West Highland Museum, Fort William.1 This object offers fascinating insights into contemporary charm practices, given that Carmichael collected not only the actual amulet itself, but also an accompanying verse and actions. All three were combined in a charm ritual performed to rescue a woman from ‘near death’ and ensure her baby’s safe delivery. This essay primarily explores the diverse yet analogous uses of sea- beans in Scotland, but draws upon examples from Norway where the objects were also used as childbirth charms. The exotic and enigmatic appearance of the sea-beans on the beaches of the Western Isles of Scotland enhanced their attraction and appeal, especially for their use in curative and protective charms by the islanders.2 Various * Guinevere Barlow, formerly a research assistant on the Carmichael Watson Project, Centre for Research Collections, University of Edinburgh. 1 Carmichael Collection, WHM 1992 13 75. 2 The earliest reference to sea-beans washed up in the Hebrides (‘Molocco Beans on the shoar of the Lewes or other [of] our Western Isles’) is made by the politician and Highland virtuoso Sir George Mackenzie of Tarbat (1630–1714), later first Earl of Cromartie, in a letter of 9 July 1675 to the mathematician Professor James Gregory (1638–75). The letter was printed as ‘Some observations made in Scotland’. Tarbat was possibly inspired by John Peachi’s leaflet Some Observations made upon the Molucco Nutts (1672). 1 Northern Studies, vol. 46 popular beliefs arose regarding the beans’ mysterious origins, including that they were objects discarded overboard by sailors on passing ships, flotsam from shipwrecks, or perhaps the seeds of underwater plants.3 As with intriguing perforated stones and fossils4, these unusual and fascinating objects were collected and employed as charms. The beans, also commonly referred to as ‘drift seeds’, are the disseminules (the collective term used for true seeds, one-seeded fruits, fruits, and seedlings) of plants and vines common to both the East and West Indies. The seeds washed up on the shores of Europe have fallen from vines in the West Indies and been borne across the Atlantic Ocean by the Gulf Stream and, latterly, the North-East Atlantic Current. Most tropical disseminules do not float in salt water; in fact only an estimated one per cent of all disseminules have specific gravity low enough to be able to drift in the sea. To qualify as a proper drift seed, it must be able to drift for at least one month: it takes at least 15 months for small objects to drift across the Atlantic on surface currents.5 Several of the seeds or fruit are still organically viable after this gargantuan journey and have been successfully grown by enthusiasts.6 Once an understanding of sea currents became widespread, the belief in sea-beans’ talismanic power gradually began to diminish. The Scottish folklorist John Francis Campbell (1821–85) referred to these sea-beans in the introduction to the first volume of his Popular Tales of the West Highlands as a metaphor to discuss the dispersal of international popular tales or Märchen: ... it is now held that nursery stories and popular tales have been handed down together with the languages in which they are told; and they are used in striving to trace our the origin of races, as philologists use words to trace language, as geologists class rocks by the shells and bones which they contain, and as natural philosophers used fairy-eggs in tracing the Gulf Stream.7 While Campbell uses the term ‘fairy-eggs’,8 the inhabitants of the Hebrides used descriptive collective and individual sea-bean names that varied throughout the islands. The lack of uniformity in the names reflects the different types of drift seeds washed up on island shores; Nelson is able to 3 See Nelson 1983, 11–35. 4 For the wider context, see Cheape 2009, 70-90. 5 Nelson 1983, 11. 6 For further reading on the subject of sea-beans see Gunn and Dennis 1976 and Guppy 1917. 7 Campbell 1860, x. 8 In Victorian periodicals and newspapers the term ‘fairy eggs’ appear in connection with wrens’ eggs, children’s puddings, and fine bone china, but the researcher has yet to find a second reference to ‘fairy egg’ for sea-beans. 2 A Northern Charm: some popular uses of Sea-Beans identify some seven separate species from descriptions given in early accounts.9 Again, there is the question of local lexical variants, and the ad hoc nature of the terminology itself. The possibility thus arises of misunderstanding due to the unfamiliarity of the ethnographic collector, and possibly the informant, with the objects concerned. Sea-beans, or drift seeds, were also known in English as ‘Molucca nuts’, a name probably reflecting a supposed origin from the Molucca [Maluku] Islands, Indonesia. The comprehensive term for them in many Gaelic dialects would appear to be a variant on cnò-bhachaill, cnò-bhàchain, cnò-bhàchair, or cnù-bhachair. The first element is simply ‘nut’, though the second is unclear: Alexander Macbain (1855–1907) in his Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language (1896) suggested Irish bachar, ‘acorn’. In a newspaper article for the Glasgow Herald on the subject, William MacKenzie (1851–1926) stated that this is the term by which sea-beans are generally known on the west mainland, but the first variant above is from Lewis, while the fourth is from Islay.10 The local expression could be simpler still: while on an expedition collecting folk narratives in Uist in September 1859, John Francis Campbell noted: Shewed nuts to many people every one knew them at once. They are quite common they said. They come on shore after Gales of West wind. They grow on the sea weed. I have seen plenty of them myself. Told my friends what I knew thereanent and got great thanks. What do the old wives do with them here? Oh they make snuff boxes of them. What do they call them? Cnothan [nuts].11 Although there are numerous species of sea-beans to be found on the beaches, the three main species evident in Hebridean folklore sources are entada gigas, merremia discoidesperma, and caesalpinia bonduc.12 These individual species also had various appellations associated with them, depending upon usage and function. The larger entada gigas could be called a cnò-spuing, a ‘tinder nut’, from employment as a watertight container, or else cnò Mhoire [Mary’s nut]. Merrimea discoidesperma was also known as cnò Mhoire [Mary’s nut], as well as crois Mhoire [Mary’s cross] or àrna Moire [Mary’s kidney]. The term crois Mhoire reflects the shape of the bean, with its naturally occurring cross on one side13, àrna Moire corresponds to the kidney shape of the entada 9 Nelson 1983, 11–12. 10 MacKenzie 1895, 7. 11 Campbell NLS Adv. MS 50.1.13 fo.407v 12 Carmichael’s ‘sea-bean’ collection at the West Highland Museum contains thirteen varieties, however not all are true drift seeds for example the hazelnut. 13 A popular international name for the merremia discoidesperma is the ‘Crucifixion Bean’. 3 Northern Studies, vol. 46 gigas but was also applied to the caesalpinia bonduc. This third species is also referred to in early sources as ‘Virgin Marie’s Nut’,14 or ‘Sanct Maries Nutt’,15 again, probably cnò Mhoire in Gaelic.16 Figure 1. Entada gigas from the Carmichael Collection, WHM 1992.13.76.5. © Carsten Flieger. There was therefore much overlapping and confusion in sea-bean names. This will be discussed further in relation to the childbirth charm. The Marian provenance in the cognomina is found across the Hebrides, both Catholic and Presbyterian. A possible parallel is to be found in Carmichael’s folklore compendium Carmina Gadelica, where he defines cuilidh Mhoire as follows: Cuilidh. Treasure, hoard, riches. Cuilidh Mhoire, the treasury of Mary, a kenning applied in Barra to the Western Ocean. A good woman in Bernery, Barra, was in sore distress over the impending famine among her people. As she lay awake wondering what she would do to mitigate the privations of her people, the form of the good woman who had died recently in Miu’alaidh appeared beside her bed, clothed in glory and light. Thubhairt an tè a bha marbh ris an tè a bha beò: ‘Na bitheadh cùram ort, a ghràdhag nam ban, mu dheighinn cor do dhaoine, is farsainn Cuilidh Mhoire.’ (The one who was dead said to the one who was living: ‘Let there be no anxiety upon thee, thou dear one among women. Wide is Mary’s Treasury.’) That year there was an excellent fishing and there was no famine.17 The Marian reference may have been reinforced through seventeenth- century Counter-Reformation Catholic missionary activity, through which widespread traditional customs and beliefs were adapted into church practices. 14 Martin 1703, 39. 15 Morison 1907, 214. 16 Nelson (2000) provides a thorough examination of the nomenclature through various Scottish references.
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